“Silver Lady”-vintage Telecaster

Single “Silver Lady”-vintage Telecaster NZ$129 for NZ customers, if you’re overseas it’s GST free; NZ$112.17

Set “Silver Lady”-vintage Telecaster NZ$249 for NZ customers, if you’re overseas it’s GST free; NZ$216.52

Alnico III, Bridge 5.9 KOhms, 3.18H, Neck 7.25 KOhms, 2.39H

The Silver Lady set is designed for the traditional telecaster player. The bridge pickup has plenty of twang and clarity but is never harsh. The neck pickup full, clear and perfectly balanced with the bridge pickup.

Telecasters are brutally honest guitars. There’s no hiding behind fat mushy tones – if you can do it on a Tele then you really can do it.

I wanted to make a Telecaster set that would reflect the clear honest tone of an old Tele. It’s a delicate balance to get enough treble and for the top end to have sufficient warmth to be usable, but with no hint of woof or boom in the bottom. The bottom needs to be full and clear with no hint of muddiness. The bridge needs a twang but it has to be a warm twang without being over harsh. I’ve used Alnico III magnets with a vintage style wind on both these pickups

Through my repair work I’ve re-wound a lot of old Tele pickups. This is invaluable experience for designing my own version. I enlisted the help of a couple of experienced Telecaster players as test pilots. I really needed plenty of opinions and testing through a variety of amplifiers to get this one right.

I’m really happy with the warm classic tone of this set, clear and chiming with just the right twang. So I have given them a classic name – “Silver Lady”.

Here are some sound samples recorded clean through a Fender Princeton Reverb-Amp with a swamp ash body, maple neck Telecaster with D’Addario 10-52’s.The overdrive is an Elecroharmonix Soul Food pedal. All of them with the same guitar, same amp, same settings, no reverb or eq added later.

Silver Lady Neck Pickup Clean: